‘I didn’t bet on a pandemic!’

Kay Mellor OBE, creator of a myriad of TV dramas, produces all her work through her own production company, Rollem in Leeds. When the BBC asked in 2019 for another series of her hugely popular drama, The Syndicate, about groups of people who win the lottery, Mellor was ready to roll. Everything was on schedule, the plot centering on a group of people who work in a kennels. They win the lottery but are cheated out of their ticket by a dodgy newsagent. Neil Morrissey had already been cast in the role and it seemed as though filming would be a straightforward process.

“I hadn’t reckoned on a global pandemic!” says Mellor from her home in Leeds that she shares with Anthony, her husband of 52 years, and their shih tzu dog Happy.

“I’d say this tested me to the limits, literally!”

Four days before filming was due to begin, the production had to be shuI down. Locations for the series included Las Vegas which became a no go. When filming did eventually start in early summer last year, actors had to be taught how to apply their own make-up, keep costume continuity, and a filming method had to be developed on how to make the cast look as though they were close together but adhering to social distancing.

“I knew I had to make a decision” says Mellor about closing the production down. “I kept putting it off but, in the end, I knew I had to because if someone became ill with Covid, I’d never forgive myself. More and more people were coming on board. I looked in the art department and there were already 30 people working in there.”

“I just had to go in and say, ‘Look guys, we’re going to shut up shop.”

“Even though it made sense, it was the hardest thing to say. But everybody was wonderful. Everybody understood. Everybody realised that I had a duty of care to the cast and crew.”

The next issue was if they couldn’t film in Las Vegas, where could they? “The team and I had been out there a few times doing recces and actually all flights and accommodation were booked for early summer for us to go and film. I googled ‘gambling capitals’ and after Vegas the most popular place was Monaco. I thought, at least it’s in Europe’!”

Dealing with the logistics of such a massive location change was one thing but putting it on the page was another. “I thought the rewriting would be a week’s job,” laughs Mellor. “As a director and writer you visualise everything and, in my head, I was on the Las Vegas strip, Fremont Street and all that. It was years since I’d been to Monaco and I had no idea what it was like.”

When the production was up and running again it was in a vastly different way. “We had so many protocols in place, “says Mellor, “From only having one person in a department at a time to testing, testing, testing. We tested ever single person who came on set and no one could go anywhere near the action until they had a negative result. We did have about eight instances where someone tested positive and sadly, we had to let them go. I must have had about 40 tests myself!” On-set catering is usually great food and an opportunity for socialising; “There was none of that,” says Mellor; “We all had to order our food before, it was brought us on paper plates with plastic cutlery and we all had to sit on our own eating, just miserable really.”

Amid all this, Mellor’s own daughter, TV producer Yvonne Francas, fell ill with Covid.

“It was a nightmare,” says Mellor. “They are down in London so I couldn’t even go to her with the lockdown restrictions. She was quite poorly and her husband, John got it and my grandson Elliot. As a mother and a grandmother, not being able to go and help was just awful. Thankfully, they all recovered.”

Mellor’s younger daughter, the actress and writer Gaynor Faye is based in Leeds and also stars in The Syndicate.

Mellor grew up in Leeds in a council semi with her divorced mother Dinah Daniel and then later her stepfather Abe Harris, an upholsterer. Dinah had divorced Kay’s father when she was four, then married Abe when Kay was 14. She recalls: “My brothers, Robert who sadly died several years ago and Phillip and I had an idyllic childhood really even though we didn’t have a lot of money.

“We didn’t live in a Jewish area, and there wasn’t much of a Jewish influence. Mum became more and more involved in Judaism when she married Abe though.”

Mellor has always been strongly family minded and like most people has missed being able to see her nearest and dearest including her four grandchildren.

“I think the nicest part really, of having a little bit of money and being more comfortable now at this stage in my life is actually going out with friends and family and having a lunch or whatever. So, I’ve found having that taken away hard. Really, I felt a bit bereft. Also, I’ve really missed going to the theatre. You don’t realise how often you go.”

As well as creating TV shows including including Band of Gold, Fat Friends and In The Club Mellor has had huge theatrical successes of her own in a career spanning four decades. Her play, A Passionate Woman, skyrocketed her into the big time and pre pandemic was always being performed somewhere in the world. She’s won countless awards including two Baftas.

Most recently she fulfilled a long-time ambition to write a musical based on her series Fat Friends.

Mellor met Anthony at 15, by 16 she was pregnant and the couple got married; “I thought my life was over,” she says. “I never thought I’d have all this.”

They now enjoy time with their dog Happy who she freely admits is a surrogate child; “Oh without a doubt!” she says.

Did she set The Syndicate in a kennels just so Happy could be in it? She laughs; “Well he is in it, but he didn’t want to do it, he’d run off into the corner. He’s a bit of diva!”

Something that couldn’t be said about Mellor herself.

 

The Syndicate returns to BBC 1 on Tuesday March 30